VMWare to Bring Traditional Windows Apps and Desktops to Chromebooks
googleenterprise.blogspot.com
googleenterprise.blogspot.com
I'm sure this solution is nice for people that are already invested in the VMWare Horizon infrastructure, but for people with Chromebooks who are already tied to physical Windows machines just using Chrome Remote Desktop (which has been supported on Chromebooks for quite a while) is probably the better solution.
Yes, initially for enterprise, but once the door is open and traveled by experts a bit to wring it out and simplify it it becomes everyone's egress. The fact of an app store app for it (mentioned at the bottom) portends that future.
There is also the Google developed RDP client for Chrome[1].
Outside of enterprise (and development) it isn't a very interesting market - the fraction of people who need Windows apps, have a Windows machine and a Chromebook, and are bothered enough by having to physically access their own Windows machine is pretty small.
The "remote assistance" market is somewhat different, but that is served by quite a lot of applications.
[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-remote-desk...
>I wonder if there's an opportunity in creating "Windows as a Service?"
On the other hand, desktone(acquired by VMware) claims it can boot in 60 seconds[2], which might work for this use case.
[1]http://www.slideshare.net/mingtemp/a-performance-study-on-th... [2]https://twitter.com/Desktone/status/312990615229050880
Someone had to be laughing when they typed that. At this point *aaS is just overused that I don't know how anyone typing another instance of it could be serious.
But you're right. I remember joking with a taxi driver about the abuse of buzzwords and we agreed he was in the "CaaS" business (car as a service).
It's not going to be pleasant.
Windows can be driven very effectively and easily by keyboard only (unlike MacOS and ChromeOS) and this advantage is lost so power users at least and a lot of office workers accustomed to using their devices via keyboard are going to be shot.
I've had to go back to a PC for RDP sessions to be honest as it's the only thing that's bearable.
[1]: http://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/ [2]: http://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/details/#desktop-and-mobile...
Awesome if they can come up with MacOS VM for iOS development; or even a optimized VM for Android development.
Unless Amazon can cut a special licensing deal with Apple, for now the only legal way to run OSX VMs is on top of OSX itself on Apple hardware. Since Apple discontinued the rackmount Xserve line in 2010, that would require a datacenter full of Mac Pro towers on shelves or something, which sounds unlikely to be appealing to Amazon.
My shelved Chromebooks for Seniors project is now off the shelf. I came to realize that they would not appeal to those who already have Windows computer experience, by far the largest share of those with experience. That group is rapidly becoming the majority of seniors. Having a unified hardware platform that can be shared among the complete set of users totally changes the game.
This might be the final correction to the deviant path taken away from thin clients with the advent of the PC.
Is there any real reason you couldn't just install Windows on Chromebook hardware? Do they lock the bootloader?
Getting Windows up natively on Chromebooks is possibly possible depending upon the machine. ARM based Chromebooks are obviously a non-starter for running x86/x64 Windows. For Intel systems it can be made to work using coreboot firmware to boot into Windows but the install process tends to be fairly involved and non-user-friendly and device specific, sort of like building a hackintosh.
Device sharing is also facilitated by the DaaS approach. Any user can log on to any device at any time and see an uninterrupted work flow. For emerging societies and especially their students this can be a huge benefit. There are many environments where sharing inexpensive hardware without penalty can be a sea change. The lack of Windows is a penalty whether we like that or not. :-)